Lancaster County DA Announces Investigation Major Voter Registration Fraud Uncovered in Penn.

Adams: “Thank you, Commissioner. Good morning, everyone. District Attorney Heather Adams. On Tuesday afternoon, I was contacted by Christa Miller, who is our chief clerk of elections regarding potentially fraudulent voter registration applications that had recently been received by her office. At that time, she informed me that the elections office received approximately 2,500 applications at or near the deadline for registering to vote. While preparing to process these applications, staff noticed that numerous applications appeared to have the same handwriting, were filled out on the same day with unknown signatures, and some were previously registered voters — excuse me — and the signatures on file did not match the signatures on the application. So before I begin to summarize our preliminary findings, I must remind everyone that this is an ongoing investigation and for that reason I will be limited in the details that I can provide. Lancaster County detectives began investigating the voter registration applications and immediately found applications that were indeed fraudulent. Indicators of fraud included inaccuracies with the addresses listed on the applications, false personal identification information, as well as false names. A number of the applications also contained names that did not match the provided Social Security information. In some cases, applications contained correct personal identification information, such as the correct address, correct phone number, date of birth, driver’s license number, and Social Security number. But the individuals listed on the applications informed detectives that they did not request the form, they did not complete the form, and verified that the signature on the form was not theirs. At this point, it is believed that the fraudulent voter registrations are connected to a large-scale canvassing operations for voter registrations that date back to June. However, the majority of the applications received are dated August 15th and after. Those canvassing for voter registrations were employed and paid to obtain voter registration applications. The majority of the applications were from residents in the City of Lancaster. However, applications were also received from residents in Columbia, Elizabethtown, Mount Joy, Akron, Ephrata, Stevens, Strasburg, as well as other locations across Lancaster County. The canvasses themselves took place at various shopping centers, parking lots of grocery stores and businesses, sidewalks, and parks. During this preliminary investigation, detectives were able to verify some of the applications were indeed legitimate. In these instances, the applicant verified that they did provide information to a canvasser. For these applications, we will immediately advise voter registration and we confirm that they are legitimate requests and voter registration will process that application. Thus far of the investigations that we have completed, we have determined that 60 percent have been fraudulent. That is of the investigations that we’ve completed. We do have more to do today and my understanding is that voter registration is still going through the box of 2,500 but should be completed sometime here today. As I said, the investigation is ongoing. We are aware of at least two other counties that receive similar applications that are currently being investigated. At this point, we have confirmed violation of our crimes code as well as our elections code. We have all available detectives working on this. We are all hands on deck so that we can properly assess the validity of these applications in a timely manner. If needed, we will request additional assistance from our local police departments. The message to the public is this, and this is a limited message to those who may have been impacted with this batch of 2,500: If you have reason to believe that your personal information was used on a voter registration application without your consent or if you were approached by someone and asked to register under suspicious circumstances, we do want to hear from you. You can call the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office 299-8100 and ask to speak to the on-call detective. I want to thank the staff of the Voter Registration Office for their excellent work, their diligence, and cooperation in this investigation. We will, of course, release any additional information that we can as the investigation proceeds.”